


the lives we lived are only golden-plated

by endofadream



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVENT SEEN IT, Infinity War spoilers, M/M, Not A Fix-It, but an excuse to explore steve’s head, major infinity war spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2018-04-28
Packaged: 2019-04-29 05:59:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14466510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endofadream/pseuds/endofadream
Summary: If there’s one thing Steve knows, something that runs even deeper in him than his own personality, it’s that Bucky is and always will be his priority.





	the lives we lived are only golden-plated

**Author's Note:**

> i’m sorry. but i’m in mourning.

Steve has heard the screams of the wounded, the tortured, has heard men gurgle their last words through the blood in their throats. He’s been at war for most of his life, one way or another, and has never seen or known an end. There’s so much he’s seen that comes to him still in dreams, in the darkest recesses of his mind when he shuts his eyes, but they are always driven away by the sun.  
  
The one thing that Steve will never forget, that even the morning sun shining on his bed cannot chase, is Bucky’s voice, scared and shocked and confused, behind him.  
  
“Steve?”  


It happens so fast, but for Steve it seems to last for minutes, the seconds pulled slow and long. He turns at Bucky’s voice, ready to intervene, shoulders already squared and right arm raised with the claws of the shield poised to kill. Bucky has already been through so much. If Thanos is back, if it’s another one of those savage alien creatures, Steve is ready. Whatever this is, Steve will fight it, tooth and nail, to keep Bucky safe. If there’s one thing Steve knows, something that runs even deeper in him than his own personality, it’s that Bucky is and always will be his priority.

Even if it means facing his own end.

  
Bucky’s eyes, wide and terrified, meet his for one second. Then he looks down and Steve follows. At first he cannot comprehend what he’s seeing. A trick of the Wakandan sun through the trees, maybe, dappling Bucky’s skin. But—no, there is no shade in the clearing they’re in, at least none close enough to touch Bucky’s body.  
  
Steve replays it later, over and over, after his fists are bloodied and already healing from a wall in Shuri’s lab, Okoye distant with her own grief in the corner. Steve, breathing hard, touching his chest and expecting to feel blood, expecting that the overwhelming ache in his heart has cracked his ribs open and exposed it.

Bucky’s hesitant steps forward, arm raised as if to reach out. Steve’s mind rewinds back seventy years to a train in the Alps. The cold bite of snow on his tongue, his lungs burning in the chilled air, Bucky’s terrified last pleading glance and Steve’s hand outstretched but just _not close enough._

Steve, now, in the warm African climate, frozen in place like he might as well be back on that train, unable to say a word as Bucky’s left arm begins to disappear.  
  
And then just...gone.  
  
Hysterically, maybe, Steve relives his Ma’s funeral. The priest saying _ashes to ashes and dust to dust_ . Steve thinking that even though he knew her body lay inside the casket, maybe she was now part of the earth itself.  
  
_Bucky is..._  
  
Steve crouches down where Bucky had stood. Ashes—Bucky’s ashes—cover the forest detritus. The world dims around him, the eerie silence left in Thanos’s wake roaring like the ocean in his ears.

Like he’s having an out of body experience Steve watches himself reach out an unsteady hand to touch.  
  
The ground is silky under his fingertips, the rough shape of a twig startling him. When he lifts his hand, the pads are covered in fine gray.

  
Ashes. _Bucky’s_ ashes.  
  
_Bucky is…_

  
Steve never said goodbye. Never had a chance to. He’d barely had the time to give Bucky a long, slow kiss deep in the night after he’d arrived, trying to convey two years’ worth of guilt, and love, and fear in one desperate moment. Hands on Bucky’s face, Bucky’s eyes glinting silver like fish under moonlit water, deep canyons of churning torrents of emotion.

“I’m okay now,” Bucky said. His fingers stroked along Steve’s jaw, over his beard like he was marveling over something new. More than likely he was; Bucky had been inquisitive as long as Steve had known him. “Shuri—” His voice broke, brittle. “I owe so much to her, Steve.”

Steve took Bucky’s hand in his, then brought it to his lips. He kissed every knuckle of Bucky’s hand, never looking away from Bucky’s eyes. The gold threading of his new arm shone like slivers of the sun. It was like a promise, and Steve’s foolish, naive heart believed it.

“It’s gonna be okay,” he said, shifting his grip so he could twine Bucky’s fingers in his. It was like there hadn’t been decades between them at all; Steve could close his eyes and they’d be back in Brooklyn, back in another time, both mortal and whole. No serums, no HYDRA, no mad titan threatening the universe. They could get away after this, go off the grid and find their own little corner of the world. They could relearn each other and learn all of the ways the decades had made them different. They could fall in love, all over again, in new ways they never could have imagined.

_Bucky is..._

Eyes closed against a tidal surge of grief that has him swaying in its hands, Steve sees it all again. He sees another failure. Finds himself almost wishing for a scream, a shout, anything but this terrifying nothing that follows, as ominous and unsettling as the dangerous grace of a jungle cat.

He hadn’t even said _I love you_.

Later, he will weep. Later, Steve will mourn and plan with the king-less Wakandans and the remaining Avengers and learn of the true amount of loss felt all through the stars. Later, Steve will look to the heavens above the vast green plains and whisper, “This ain’t the end of the line yet, Buck. Wherever you are, I’ll get you back. I love you.”

Now. Now, though.

Now, Steve sinks to his knees in grief, among the scattering of gray. Lets it slump his shoulders and leaden his bones, giving himself a moment to let all the pain settle into his muscles. He takes a handful of earth and ash, studies it, and lets it sift through his fingers into the wind.

_Bucky isn’t dead. Not now. Not yet._

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr is [here](https://endofadream.tumblr.com) and instagram is [here](https://instagram.com/wintersoldiered), if you’re into that sort of thing. let’s chat and grieve together.


End file.
